Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Rode Max

Yesterday, D got home from work early enough that I could have him watch Baby O for a little bit while I did some chores. I went out to water the experimental garden (you can see it in the background. I put up hoop houses with cold weather seeds earlier this year. So far so good), and feed the animals.

It was a very windy day and as I was feeding, the town's tornado sirens went off (state-wide test day). Normally, we can't hear them, but the wind was coming from town. I asked D if he could hear them in the house.  He couldn't.  Good to know.  Wind + sirens = pony on edge.

Rode the pony!  He wasn't impressed, but obliged.

After I gave Max his grain, I decided to groom him since he's finally shedding all over.  Something in my head thought it would be a good idea to get up on him in the paddock just to see what it was like. And it went fairly well. I could tell he was a little on edge and kept getting distracted, but he never offered to spook.  I even tried trotting him a short distance. He listened (yay!) and didn't seem like he was going to offer up a buck or bolt (double yay).  One thing we need to work on is standing still.  I had put him in place to take the photo, but after a couple of seconds he veered off to the right.  So back we went. 

One interesting thing about this short ride was that it felt he was responding to light leg pressure.  It really didn't take much for me to get him going into a walk or trot. It almost seems like he knows all this stuff, he just chooses to ignore what you're asking out of laziness. 


Monday, March 14, 2016

I continue to live

I continue to live and have a horse.  I haven't done much with said horse recently, but some work has been done. A couple of weeks ago, I worked with Max again with lunging.  I was pretty darn impressed with him. It was a nice windy day with at least two houses near by doing target practice. Boy wasn't really spooky, though it was hard to keep his attention on me. He did try to evade by doing his buck/bolt thing on the line, but I was able to hold on and yelled at him to whoa...which he actually did. Good boy! 

The paddock was slick with mud, but I decided to pop on him bareback just to see where my own balance was after having the baby.  He wasn't fazed at all, but my core leaves something to be desired. We only did one lap and that was enough. I was glad I got off when I did because shortly after there was a big cannon-like boom.  We still don't know what it was, but there have been other booms since and I heard some law enforcement agency is investigating. Local theories are explosives or aliens. 

Derpy pony is derpy


More recently, Max met Baby O.  He wasn't impressed once he realized Baby O neither had treats nor was he edible. Or, at least that I wouldn't allow Max to get close enough to try.